"My great claim to fame as a writer of radio drama is that I invented the character of Nigel Pargeter who recently (Christmas 2010) fell so tragically to his death from the barn roof in Ambridge. I am still introduced socially as the guy who used to write "The Archers." Even though it was 30 years ago. But I have touched the hem of immortality!"

My thoughts on radio drama were expressed in a Radio 3 50th Anniversary programme in 1996:

Second of five programmes looking at the links between literature and the Third Programme in which a current writer of the genre in question listens to early examples and judges them in modern terms. Dramatist John Fletcher listens to some Third Programme radio plays to discover how writers managed to get to grips with the medium. His conclusions are not complimentary and for him the British theatrical establishment is to blame.

The interview was filmed in my back garden only three weeks before the Glastonbury Festival, so the construction noise from the field next to me - where the huge fence was being built - makes the interviewer often inaudible, and explains some of my more irritated comments about my "neighbour." The noise does not seem to have been picked up on my mike, tho - pointing away from the festival.

The interview was not only about writing but also living in the country and working in a village.